… but you might not be aware of this almost equally dramatic title decider, one that has been weirdly airbrushed out of history. When folk talk of the extraordinary circumstances surrounding Brian Clough's first title, they concentrate almost exclusively on Leeds's failure to get the point they needed at Wolves to win the championship ahead of Clough's Derby. Yet on the same Monday night, because of Leeds's 2-1 defeat by Wolves, Liverpool would have pipped Derby had they beaten Arsenal at Highbury.

They came excruciatingly close. Emlyn Hughes hit the bar, John Toshack missed a great chance; then, with two minutes to go, Toshack had a goal disallowed for offside. The Guardian said he was "palpably offside", but the Liverpool manager, Bill Shankly, disagreed and suggested that the decision was given by the referee, not the linesman. For some clubs it might have been a lifelong frustration; but when you win 11 of the next 18 titles, as Liverpool did, it's easier to forget about the one that got away.

The three yellow cards were supposed to be Graham Poll's nadir, but the three red cards ran it pretty close. When he wasn't acting up, Poll had very few peers among English referees, but this was an appalling performance: ostentatious, overzealous, and made worse because Poll had cosied up to Richard Keys and Andy Gray in a cringeworthy pre-match interview on Sky. (After the game, inevitably, Keys and Gray slaughtered him.)

It was the first Monday night match of the season, a heavyweight clash that everyone was looking forward to, but then Poll arrived on the scene. He sent off Gary McAllister, Patrick Vieira (his second red card in two games that season, prompting genuine fears he'd do one from English football) and Dietmar Hamann for various forms of aggressive breathing. Poll admitted he got the Hamann decision wrong, and the FA overturned McAllister's red card. But, despite both sets of fans chanting "send the red off", Poll did not show himself two yellow cards, never mind three.

Liverpool lost their way between 1984 and 1987. Sure, they won their only Double in 1986 but that team wasn't fit to track the passing and movement of those either side of it. The three relatively lost years began and ended at Highbury. In August 1984, Liverpool suffered their first defeat after the sale of Graeme Souness, an emphatic 3-1 reverse that hinted at the struggles ahead; it was only after the purchase of John Barnes, Peter Beardsley and John Aldridge in the summer of 1987 that they fully recovered, and went on to win the league in truly awesome fashion.

That famous campaign started in north London, in front of English football's biggest crowd for three years, and in an atmosphere rich in optimism even by opening-day standards. The three new attackers combined with intimidating ease for Liverpool's first goal, but the real highlight was their late winner: a remarkable long-range header from Steve Nicol. Liverpool had lost five of their last eight league games the previous season. Now, inspired by the holiest of trinities, they would lose none of the first 29.

Top of our list, however, is this free-kick, a genuine Barnes stormer: it may not be the best, but it hit all the right spots. There's the overwhelming, perfectly synchronised roar from the crowd; that it was a free-kick taken from the 'wrong' side (a rarity in English football in those days); that Barnes seemed to be moving from good to great on live TV (he scored a wonderful chip at Millwall on The Match a week earlier); and Brian Moore growling a spine-tingling commentary: "It's gonna be Barnes … curled … brilliantly! What a fabulous free-kick goal! What a glorious moment of pure football skill from John Barnes!"

Most important of all, there was the context: six months earlier, Arsenal had taken Liverpool's title at Anfield – a game in which Barnes had, dismally, been criticised for not messing about by the corner flag. It was also the eighth meeting between these new rivals in just over 12 months. Barnes' goal ultimately gave Liverpool a win that put them back on top of the league – at the expense of this young Arsenal side, whose increasingly disappointing season would end with none of them making the England World Cup squad – on the way to winning their 18th title. In those days, they could flex their muscles as if to order.

Modern sport is no place for a Good Samaritan. In cricket, Adam Gilchrist's decision to walk in the 2003 World Cup semi-final created problems that he could never have envisaged. The same applied, to a lesser extent, when Robbie Fowler asked the referee, Gerald Ashby, not to award a penalty against Arsenal. For every two people hailing a rare act of sportsmanship, there was one suggesting that Fowler had behaved disingenuously. Such a phenomenon attests to a sporting world that is, at best, irredeemably cynical and, at worst, downright sick. Fowler did not deserve the grief he got from others, and even himself. "It was a bit fucking dippy to be honest," he wrote in his autobiography, "and I could hear a couple of the lads shouting at me to shut the fuck up." It's advice they, and anyone else questioning him, might have done well to heed.

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